Getting Regulators Comfortable with Data

The New Normal: The world is changing. From 2013 to 2020, the digital universe — the data created and copied annually will grow by a factor of 10 — from 4.4 trillion gigabytes to 44 trillion gigabytes. By 2020, 1.7 MB of new digital information will be created each minute for every human.1 To put this in perspective, that means that more data has been created in the past two years than in the entire history of the human race. Quite simply, the world is getting too big for paper.

On the other hand, regulators love paper. They have a high-level of comfort with getting a thick file full of supporting documentation that they can work through to determine what happened. It is the way that they have been doing it for years and, for the most part, it will continue as their chosen path going forward.

So the question becomes how to best manage situations when these two opposite positions collide. Put another way, how do you avoid situations where giant data sets and robust technology infrastructure make telling your story to regulators overwhelming?

In this article, we will discuss why we need to get regulators comfortable with electronic information, and how embracing it can bring new insights and save time and costs on your cases.

Rather than try and understand this issue in the abstract, let’s discuss it through the context of three real-life scenarios that I’ve experienced with my clients. We will then talk about solving the problem with one solid solution.

1 IDC, “The Digital Universe of Opportunities: Rich Data and the Increasing Value of the Internet of Things,” April 2014.